Chapter 29
Sarang stared at the teeth marks in Shiloh’s neck as he fucked him, self-hatred blooming in his gut the longer he looked.
If he’d only been quicker…If he’d never locked Shiloh up in the first place…
It’d taken them far too long to fight their way out of Taboo.
Healing that Gray female had taken it out of him, and he’d struggled to recover.
Diogenes had been working hard, gathering his hidden forces for long enough to be able to send thirty of them after Sarang.
They’d lost one or two of their own soldiers in the process, and Tull had suffered from a broken arm, but they’d gotten through, called for backup, and rushed here as fast as they could.
Thanks to the life-bond that was still strong and pulsing between Sarang and Shiloh.
He’d followed the trail here, preparing to find something horrible, but even his darkest thoughts hadn’t been able to think up what he’d witnessed.
Sarang had always hated Diogenes and his obvious feelings for Shiloh, but he’d trusted him.
At least, he’d trusted that Dio would never betray the prince.
Clearly, Shiloh had believed the same, otherwise Dio never would have gotten close enough to slip him whatever drug he’d managed to get into his system.
The life-bond had recognized the weakness and started to feed off it almost as soon as Sarang had run through the door. If they hadn’t been connected through it, it would have taken twice as long for him to clear Shiloh’s system, too long to make a difference.
And his omega would belong to someone else now.
“You almost accepted his mark.” Sarang had seen it in his omega’s eyes. When Diogenes had threatened to shoot him, and Shiloh had agreed to the bite, he’d been serious.
“I’m sorry.” Shiloh said. “I didn’t want it.”
He froze. His alpha instincts had reacted to seeing his omega almost claimed by someone else, and it’d taken every ounce of control to stop himself from tossing Shiloh to the ground and mounting him like some beast. He hadn’t wanted to make a bad situation worse, however, and wasn’t sure how traumatized Shiloh was from what’d just happened with Dio.
“I’m not blaming you.” He started moving his hips once more when Shiloh pushed back against him, clearly asking for it. It seemed like they both wanted to remove any and all traces of what Dio had done.
When given the choice between himself and Sarang, Shiloh hadn’t hesitated to choose him.
Then he’d cut Dio’s dick off like a feral monster.
“There’s blood on your hands,” he noticed.
“I know I promised I’d try not to, but—”
“I take it back,” Sarang said. “Get them as bloody as you need to.”
“You should have let him suffocate.”
Sarang hadn’t been able to hold out that long. “It wasn’t worth having to see you on top of him for even a second longer.”
“He didn’t come,” Shiloh stated. “Didn’t knot.”
Sarang pressed a finger against the torn flesh between the base of his neck and his shoulder. “Does it hurt?”
“Get rid of it.”
He slowed his thrusts, uncertainty settling in.
“That’s why you’re fucking me on this rooftop instead of rushing me to a doctor,” Shiloh pointed out, seeing right through him. “I thought I was meeting you. Valentine said you’d planned something. When I got here, I thought…”
He’d seen the bed and the cake and thought Sarang had decided to bite him.
“You were right,” Sarang found himself saying. “Romance is overrated.”
“I kind of like it,” Shiloh disagreed. “Sometimes.”
“But not now?”
“No. Not now.”
Sarang flooded him with his pheromones, drowning out any lingering smell of the other alpha, not satisfied until he was completely cleansed of that stench. Then he wrapped his arms around Shiloh’s front and started pounding into him, going rough and hard the way he knew his omega preferred.
Sure enough, it only took another minute or so for Shiloh to come, crying out his name as his hole strangled Sarang’s cock and milked him.
His own orgasm hit, and he slammed in as deep as he could go, grinding against Shiloh’s ass hard enough to make the omega whimper. The second his knot began to form, he pulled Shiloh in closer and lowered his mouth over the partial mark made by another.
The second his teeth locked into place, they both groaned, and he didn’t need to ask Shiloh to accept it when he clamped down and tugged on that internal well of energy.
The bond was a silent offering, made more out of sensation than anything, hard to describe to those who hadn’t experienced it themselves. There was a push against Shiloh’s mind, then a tug when the omega opened up to him and submitted, accepting the claim.
It felt nothing like the life-bond, was more of a sudden burst of energy that had his cock instantly hard again and his alpha instincts howling. Within seconds, he had Shiloh on his back on the ground, rutting into him like a wild, mindless thing.
Which his omega clearly enjoyed.
Shiloh’s pupils were blown wide, and he bared his little fangs the second Sarang released his bite and lifted his head to look down at him. His nails buried into the tender flesh of Sarang’s shoulders, and then he dragged him back, returning the bite with as much ferocity as Sarang was showing.
There was no repeated energy burst, probably because the official claiming mark could only be offered by an alpha, but Sarang still felt a swell of pleasure at knowing that Shiloh had chosen him.
His knot came a second time, and he heaved a shaky breath when Shiloh came around him and cried out, releasing his teeth in the process.
His omega laughed and dropped his head down against the dirty stone floor, grinning up at him. Blood stained his lips and smeared across his chin, but he’d never looked more beautiful than in that moment, trapped by Sarang’s knot and bound to him through the claiming bond.
“This is not at all how I pictured it,” Sarang confessed a moment later, once he was finally able to catch his breath.
“No?” Shiloh laughed again, the sound light and filled with warmth. “It’s pretty much exactly how I always imagined it going down.”
He quirked a brow, and the omega snorted.
“I mean, without the whole Dio part of it all.”
Sarang felt himself sober. “Are you really okay?”
“Why? Because the whole rape thing?” He shrugged a shoulder. “Not the first time it’s happened.”
He grimaced, and the omega was the one to comfort him, wrapping his arms around Sarang’s neck and nuzzling against the curve of his jaw.
Shiloh released his pheromones in the process, scenting him with a soothing smell that helped unwind some of the heavy knot forming at the center of Sarang’s chest. “Hey. It’s fine. I’m not normal, remember? I’m not like everyone else.”
No, because Shiloh’s line of thinking was still stuck in the old ways.
“Being alpha doesn’t give him the right to sexually assault anyone,” Sarang growled.
This might be a part of his omega he never truly understood, but that was all right. If this had taught him anything, it was that understanding a person fully wasn’t necessary to love and appreciate them for who they were. Even if he didn’t always agree with him, Sarang merely had to respect him.
Considering what he’d just been through, maybe it was a blessing in disguise that Shiloh felt this way, in any case. It truly seemed like he wasn’t going to be haunted by it.
“The breeding den was way worse,” Shiloh said then, cutting through Sarang’s thoughts and momentarily causing him to worry all over again. “But at least the Leviathan could fuck properly. I didn’t even feel it when Dio put it in me. Did you happen to catch a good look? Was it small? It felt small.”
Sarang gathered Shiloh off the ground and carried him over to the table, sweeping the contents onto the floor. Glass shattered and champagne fizzled, but he was already drowning out the sounds with their bodies, capturing Shiloh by the thighs and spreading him wide as he rammed into him.
His omega sobbed and clawed at the table, wringing the tablecloth around his fingers as tears collected in the corners of his eyes and his full dick bobbed between them, occasionally slapping lewdly against his stomach, leaving a trail of wet, sticky drops in its wake.
Sarang thought about their weekend, about how nice it’d been to make love to him slow and sweet. How much he enjoyed the way the omega had clung to him and whimpered in his ear as he was slowly opened up around his thick cock.
But this was nice too.
Watching Shiloh come completely undone, his nipples hard and begging for Sarang’s teeth, neck still bleeding from the marks he’d placed. Marks that would leave an obvious scar.
Marks that would tell the whole universe that he was already taken.
“Mine,” Sarang growled, leaning forward to capture one of those rosy buds between his lips. He gave a hard suck that had Shiloh’s back bowing off the table, allowing his cock to sink in deeper into that warm, tight heat. “All mine. Say it.”
“Yours.” Shiloh cried out when Sarang changed the angle, pounding against his prostate pointedly. “Good Light! Right there! Alpha!”
“Tell me you love me.” It wasn’t really fair. He shouldn’t demand something like that, especially not in their current positions, but…How could the omega not love him? Hadn’t he already shown as much? “You’d rather become his than lose me.”
“I will never be anyone else’s,” Shiloh surprised him with his vehemence. His hands found Sarang’s face and he forced him to look at him. “I’ve always been yours, Rang. Always. There’s never been anyone else. There never could be. Even when I didn’t understand what it was, I loved you. I love you.”
Sarang kissed him, driving his tongue forcefully into his mouth, needing to consume all of his omega to satiate this tormenting need within him.
His omega was strongestrong, stronger that he was.
He already predicted he’d wake from nightmares of this night for months to come, but there was a blessing in knowing he’d be alone in that.
“I won’t let anything bad happen to you ever again,” he swore. “I’ll protect you.”
They both came a third time, and he shifted so that when his knot formed, they were both comfortable.
Shiloh nipped at his chin. “I don’t need protecting, Rang. I just need cake, and cock, and…” His brow furrowed. “There’s no word similar to love that starts with a C, but you get my point.”
“Cherish,” Sarang said. “I’ll cherish you for the rest of time, my perfect, slightly demonic, omega.”
“Only slightly?”
Sarang started to turn his head toward the bed, but Shiloh grabbed him by the cheeks again and pulled him back.
“Don’t,” he stated. “He doesn’t get to be here with us anymore. No one gets to come between us ever again. He’s nothing. His corpse is nothing. There’s only me and you and nothing else.”
For the first time, Sarang finally thought he understood Shiloh’s true stance. It wasn’t that he found romance a waste, he just didn’t hold the fancy trappings to the same high standards that Sarang did. Because to Shiloh, only one thing that ever been important enough to consider.
“It doesn’t matter where we are,” Shiloh whispered, as though reading his mind. “Whether I’m bleeding in a salt field or on a rooftop, so long as you’re with me, I can be happy.”
“I love you.” Sarang had denied his own feelings all these years, and the honesty now was like a massive weight lifted off his chest. He glanced at the teeth marks on Shiloh’s body, the ones signifying his claim to the omega who’d enthralled him right from the start.
“Fated mates aren’t real, but I’d like to believe that a part of me knew you were the one that day in the field. ”
Shiloh chuckled. “Such a damn romantic.”
“Is it still sappy,” Sarang asked, “even with my cock impaling you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the romantic part.”
“We’ll agree to disagree.”
“So long as you keep fucking me, you can be right all you want.”
“Really?”
“Yes, alpha.”
His knot started deflating, and he pulled out before the omega could get too excited again. When Shiloh pouted, he grinned and held out a hand, waiting for him to take it so he could help him sit up.
“Caelum or Taboo?” Sarang made sure Shiloh could sit on his own, then went to pick up the half-broken champagne bottle. There was still some left, so he brought it over to the mattress and poured it over the dead body.
“What?” Shiloh called behind him, not bothering to come over or ask what he was doing.
He pulled a lighter from his pocket, flicked it on, and then tossed it onto Dio’s chest. The whole thing went up in flames, the smell of char and burnt flesh instantly lifting into the air. Sarang returned to his omega.
“It’s our honeymoon period,” he pointed out. “Where would you like to spend it? Your cell or mine?”
Shiloh rolled his eyes and allowed Sarang to pick him up bridal style, linking his arms around his neck as he walked them toward the exit.
“After a claim, constant mating is encouraged to help strengthen the bond between an alpha and omega. It’s practically clinical. I’d hardly call that a honeymoon.”
“As if you’d want to spend a real honeymoon anywhere but in the bedroom.”
“Fair.” Shiloh didn’t bother denying it. “I’m still naked from the waist down you know?”
“No one will see.” Sarang was confident the others had left like he’d ordered. “This shirt is large. It covers your ass. Where did it come from?”
“I thought it was from you,” he admitted, picking at a button. “But considering it matches the one Dio was wearing—”
Sarang dropped him onto his feet at the top of the stairwell, tearing the shirt off of him and tossing it over his shoulder before lifting him again.
“How romantic,” Shiloh teased. “But now I seriously am naked.”
“Do you mind?”
“Not at all. But you might if someone happens to catch a peek.”
“I’ll let you stab out their eyes, how does that sound?”
“Like a lie, but that’s okay.” Shiloh sighed. “It’s the thought that counts.”
“Where are we going, omega?” He’d driven separately, and his car was parked out front. So long as he moved quickly, they could make it without being noticed, especially since it was nearing midnight.
“You choose, alpha.” He settled more comfortably into his arms, resting his cheek on the top of Sarang’s head. “I’m already home.”